April and May were busy Months

April and May were busy months in so many ways, there was racing, traveling, working, building, buying.

First lets start with racing...well kind of. back in April I traveled back to Ontario and attempted to race the famous Paris to Ancaster race. I went with the new bike and hopes that my fitness wasn't too bad. The bike was great but the fitness was not there at all. About half way though the race there was just a little hill up an over pass I tried to stand and peddle over it and my legs just said no you can't do that. From that point on the race just became a nice little ride in the mud. Yes as usual P2A was a mudfest.

My new bike on it's first real ride after P2A mudfest

The second half of my racing for the season goes out to Edmonton for an Alberta Cup race. All I can say is that there is a huge difference between the Alberta XC race scene and the Ontario XC race scene.

The start of the MENS SPORT catigory, yup all ages!

I was very disappointed that I didn't get to finish because of two reasons, first I had a pretty bad cold and second my shock became stuck down again for the second time this season. Oh ya one other factor that probably didn't help the cold situation, I am really out of shape for biking I guess working on a drilling rig is not overly great for bike conditioning.

As far as regular riding goes I had some good rides with some good friends when I was back in Ontario including the best of friends, My Rudy dog. Then when I came back to Alberta I discovered what Alberta riding is all about....Massive climbs great views followed by some fast buff singletrack decents.
These were taken from some pretty high points after a 4 km climb in the Bragg creek area wich is only about 45min drive from the house. I can't

wait to get back again and explore some new trails, but for now I will get some road riding in so I can acctually make it up the mountain.

Now for the last part of my last two months is the building...and buying...I spent the first couple of days off last month locked away in my garage, there was a lot of noise, a lot of dust and fumes that wofted out of there over those three days but in the end I ended up with this!!!!

My own persoal shop!! and the start of JRA Stories Bike Service Shop. There has already been a few nice little projects done with the workbench including a shock rebuild and an XTR crank install, not to mention regular service and cleaning of all the bikes.

 And if you didn't notice the stable got a little fuller last month as well, with the addition of Jolene's new Kona Dew Plus - The Bownesion a great little bike for her to commute to work with on the beautiful trails here in Calgary. Yup that is a RMB flatline in there as well, my new DH rig, I got out on it once so far and other then taking a good crash on it the first time out I love it, I can't wait for all the shuttle runs and park runs it will take me on this summer.

That covers pretty much my last two months of riding, now the challenge will be to keep this up to date as much as possible with more adventures pictures of all sorts.